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- First Security Group Completes Transformation of Executive Management Team
- CBRE Clarion Global Real Estate Income Fund (NYSE: IGR) Declares Monthly Distribution for February
- Wells Fargo Advantage Closed-End Funds Declare Monthly and Quarterly Dividends
- Evans Bancorp Reports 176% Increase in Net Income for the Fourth Quarter of 2011 and Record Results for the Year
- AXIS Capital CEO John Charman to Present at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Insurance Conference 2012
PYMNTS Voice
Commentary » PYMNTS Voice
Handicapping PayPal and Google in the Mobile Transaction Platform Race
PART 1: • Handicapping PayPal in its Mobile Race with Google and Others
Handicapping Google in its Mobile Race with PayPal and Others
PART 1: • Handicapping PayPal in its Mobile Race with Google and Others
Analysis: After Google Buys Motorola, What’s Next for the Payments Ecosystem?
Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get more exciting in the mobile world, Google up and buys Motorola (view press release). Google’s planned acquisition of Motorola is just plain big news. Could it be a giant stepping stone on the way to creating a tightly integrated mobile ecosystem that will reshape commerce – or a misstep by now giving other handset makers more of an incentive to consider alternative operating systems?
(More: Google Does Cards)
From Search to Swipe... Google Does Cards
So, I wonder how many payments industry hearts stopped beating yesterday morning when the news hit the wires that Google was issuing a credit card? Turns out that it was not THAT kind of credit card, but rather a small business financing tool that happens to be a plastic card carrying the MasterCard bug and issued by World Financial Capital Bank. This card will be free, carry a low interest rate (8.99%) but can only be used to purchase AdWords. It is being offered to select businesses as part of a beta and will be rolled out to a larger group at a later time.
"Googling" mPayments Ignition? Why Google's Wallet May Be the Top Search Result
- Ask the Industry: Will Google Wallet ignite mobile payments? Share your thoughts here.
Outstanding in the Field: FinovateSpring 2011 Showcase
Finovate hosted their spring event this week at the San Francisco Design Center, bringing together the latest and greatest innovators for payments and financial service technologies in a massive exhibition hall in the city by the bay. The San Francisco Bay Area has been a global leader in business model and technology innovation, giving birth to such household names as Apple, Google, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Intel... the list of global technology leaders born and bred in Northern California goes on and on.
Google Takes on NFC, Will They Crack the Code?
Google has signaled that it will do two things no one else in the payments ecosystem has done or even talked about: make a business case for merchants and consumers around NFC and maybe even put some real money behind it.
Google has obviously made a decision that NFC is an opening into something more interesting and lucrative than transforming a phone into a payment card– advertising and marketing opportunities at the point of sale – the physical point of sale. And, it has done a deal with VeriFone that takes the economic sting away from the merchants who need to buy into their vision to make it work – and who have by and large turned their noses up at NFC up to this point. Layer on top of that their Google Checkout asset and their newly launched One-Pass wallet application and you have the makings of an interesting new payments player. What’s more, Google is building this capability on top of its core assets – online advertising, eyeballs and now its hockey-sticking market share of Android operating systems. The result is the potential to position itself as not just a payments player, but one that has can blend on and off-line transacting in a new, interesting and potentially big way using the mobile phone as a conduit to the physical and online commerce worlds.
What’s amazing is that Google was the first to connect all of these dots. No doubt those loyal readers of PYMNTS.com have read more than a few of my skeptical musings over attempts to use NFC merely as a way to turn phones into cards. That ship had not only sailed but it hit a huge sandbar when terminal subsidies to merchants dried up and no one tapped at the point of sale even though there were millions of cards in circulation. There was just nothing in the way of a value proposition around NFC as a mag stripe replacement. Yet for years the traditional players continued to invest in and follow a traditional path around NFC deployment which marginalized its potential as enabler of commerce, not just transactions.
Google has both the money and the motivation to drive success. They also have two more things: lots of money and lots of data. Google is an advertising platform and is sitting on treasure troves of data that it successfully monetizes today on their platform. It has a built an engine that can be used to drive offers, targeted offers, and a business model that does not need transaction revenue to pay the bills. It’s why Google might be very happy to fund merchant terminal deployment that traditional card networks can “free ride” – their payday is much richer and much less dependent on marginal transaction costs. Google could really knit together an interesting business model that in and of itself could be disruptive and a customer base and offers platform that could outmaneuver its once-upon-a-time love interest, Groupon.
All I can say is that it took Google to finally make NFC worth paying attention to, for everyone.
The Race to Own Mobile Commerce
Apple and Google are off to the races in owning commerce on the mobile phones as recent transactions and announcements clearly show. Here’s a running recap …
What is Alternative Payment?
The payments landscape is constantly changing with new technology and applications regularly emerging trumpeted as the latest and greatest "Alternative Payment" system. With all of this change it might be helpful if we define "Alternative Payment." Perhaps the challenge is to define "Traditional Payment" and say that everything else is Alternative Payment, but somehow that does not satisfy the question.
What’s in the Cloud for Payments?
When we speak of “payments in the cloud” we are using the term in a broader sense than it is usually used in the information technology world.
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